Defying Conventional Wisdom to Sell Glasses Online

Neil Blumenthal, left, and David Gilboa of Warby Parker, sell eyeglasses online.Credit
Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Shopping skeptics said people would never buy certain things — shoes, diamond rings, cars — online because they needed to see the products in person. They were wrong. E-commerce companies have found success in all of those fields.

But some purchases still happen mostly offline, including one of the most personal: prescription eyeglasses.

Warby Parker, a New York start-up, thinks it can persuade people to shop online for glasses, with a combination of fashion, low prices, technology and old-fashioned customer service. It seems to be working. In its first year of business, the company sold about 20,000 pairs of glasses; however, it would not disclose financial information.

It joins a new generation of e-commerce companies that is changing online shopping by taking a cue from Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer that emphasizes convenience and customer service, and which was bought by Amazon.com in 2009.

“We’re asking consumers to change the way they buy eyeglasses, so we want to de-risk it as much as possible,” said David Gilboa, who founded Warby Parker with three friends from business school, Neil Blumenthal, Andrew Hunt and Jeffrey Raider.

The company designs its own glasses, which largely stick to a stylish chunky look, and generally sell them for $95, including prescription lenses made of polycarbonate plastic. By contrast, designer prescription glasses typically cost several hundred dollars. The company keeps prices low by ordering from manufacturers and selling directly to consumers, avoiding expenses like brand licensing fees and retail markups along the way. It does not offer bifocals, and it charges extra for thinner lenses for strong prescriptions.

A few big licensing companies like Luxottica and Safilo design, manufacture and market glasses for dozens of brands, including Ray-Ban, Chanel, Prada, Ralph Lauren and Gucci. Often the companies sell the glasses, too — Luxottica owns chains like Sunglass Hut and LensCrafters.

Warby Parker orders the acetate for the frames directly from a supplier in Italy and has them made in the same Chinese factories the big companies use. The lenses are inserted in New York.

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Warby Parker designs its glasses, like these for women, and primarily sells them for $95, including prescription lenses.

“After we learned there was no reason that glasses should be this expensive, we said, why don’t we create a different model?” Mr. Gilboa said. “We can bypass the retail channel and sell them for a hundred dollars and still have a very viable business.”

In that sense, Warby Parker is a classic Internet business — working to upend an industry by taking out the middleman. But it is also following a model initiated by companies like Zappos and Blue Nile that aims to reduce the risk of buying online by offering superior customer service.

For instance, the Web site uses facial recognition technology so shoppers can upload a photo of themselves and try on virtual glasses. For those who are still doubtful, the company will mail five loaner frames. All glasses are returnable, and Warby Parker rents space in a few stores in big cities where people can try on glasses before ordering online.

“It’s very much a new model,” said John Gerzema, president of Brand Asset Consulting, who studies shopping trends. Most e-commerce sites try to steer customers toward a purchase, while Warby Parker encourages people to mull it over, he said.

“You may lose a few sales, but what’s interesting is they’re betting that the margin is in the relationship long-term,” as well as in fewer dissatisfied customers and returns, Mr. Gerzema said.

Mr. Gilboa and Mr. Blumenthal, who run the company, declined to say what percentage of frames was returned but they said it was lower than the 20 percent they had expected.

Other young e-commerce start-ups are taking a similar approach. Bonobos, for instance, a New York business that sells men’s pants, encourages customers to order pairs in different sizes and return those that do not fit, with free shipping both ways.

Warby Parker customers enter their prescription information on the site, including the distance between their pupils, which is not usually on prescriptions but which opticians can easily measure. Some states also require customers to send the company a copy of the prescription.

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A model photographed for Warby Parker, an online company that has sold 20,000 pairs of glasses in its first year of business.Credit
Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Warby Parker’s glasses, with their thick, square frames inspired by “Mad Men,” are more stylish, and look as if they came from the streets of Brooklyn — as do the models on the site. The company says its frames and prices appeal to people in their 20s who might be spending their own money on glasses for the first time.

The founders recently hired an eyeglass designer, but they designed the first collection, using ideas from magazines, vintage stores and their grandparents’ homes. They sell a monocle — “the perfect accessory for budding robber barons, post-colonial tyrants and super villains,” the site says — based on one owned by Mr. Hunt’s grandfather.

The founders say they were drinking buddies at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania when they hatched the idea for Warby Parker, named after characters from unpublished Jack Kerouac writings.

Mr. Blumenthal learned about the optical industry when he worked at VisionSpring, a nonprofit group that sells low-cost glasses in developing countries. Warby Parker now donates a pair of glasses through similar groups for every pair purchased.

The founders started the Web site last February, while still taking classes, and planned to spend the rest of the school year “working out the kinks in the business, selling a few hundred pairs of glasses to friends and my mom,” Mr. Gilboa said.

But then GQ and Vogue.com wrote about the site. In 48 hours, the company had run out of loaner frames and was about to sell out of glasses. The founders called an emergency meeting because their site was not able to indicate when frames sold out.

In three weeks, they had beaten their first-year sales targets. They have run the company on cash flow plus their savings and two small loans.

The business now has 18 employees and an airy, one-room Manhattan office. In an interview there, Mr. Blumenthal wore the boxy Huxley frames, but no prescription lenses, because he does not need them. Mr. Gilboa, who has worn glasses since sixth grade, wore the sandalwood Japhy glasses, which the company’s site says were “made for the contemporary intellectual.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2011, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Defying Conventional Wisdom to Sell Glasses Online. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe